Sunday, May 11, 2008
Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of BalanceThis is a great movie if you haven’t seen it. It came out in the mid-1980s and features stunning music by Phillip Glass. I have it and the sequels on DVD. basically, the film is just videos of nature vs industry. Its’ supposed to be a critique of modern life. It’s hard to take your eyes off it once you start watching.
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REVIEW: Speed Racer
I’m not surprised this movie bombed over the weekend. It suffers from too much gee whiz and not enough solid craft. It’s an endless blur of CGI and color mixed with a lot of talking heads with sporadic action. The end result is a too long, too silly story about evil corporate sponsors vs race car drivers for justice.
I think they were trying for something cutting edge, thinking kids have grown up on video games, so lets make a whole movie that looks like one. The sad thing is, the 1960s cartoon had better animation that sections of this film. It was too gaudy and grainy in places and the colors would make a gay fashion designer wince.
The script was as cartoony as the look of the film. Over all, it screams “rental.”
I think I’ll check out Forbidden Kingdom or Red Belt next.
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars Trailer
I’ve been less than satisfied with the recent Star Wars movies, but I liked the Clone Wars anime and this new movie looks kind of interesting.
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Top Ten Jackie Chan Fights
I agree with his pick of #1. Dragons Forever has an amazing climactic fight scene.
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Iron Man/Nick Fury
Marvel has announced two Avengers films, the first introduces Captain America, probably showing him being revived from the ice. Followed by his own movie. So this may be setting that up.
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Freenomics
The birth of a new economic system? Some are arguing that free may be the new price for many goods.
Anderson’s freeconomics thesis is that more and more goods and services are being provided for free and that those businesses that fail to follow suit are likely to go to the wall. “As much as we complain about how expensive things are getting, we’re surrounded by forces that are making them cheaper,” Anderson wrote in a recent article that will form the basis of a book called Free, to be published next year. “Forty years ago, charity was dominated by clothing drives for the poor. Now you can get a T-shirt for less than the price of a cup of coffee, thanks to China and global sourcing. So too for toys, gadgets and commodities of every sort. Even cocaine has pretty much never been cheaper (globalisation works in mysterious ways).”
But freeconomics is hardly a deluded eulogy to global capitalism. Rather, Anderson’s idea is that the internet, by reducing marginal costs, encourages businesses to make their money by offering free goods or services to an extent we have not witnessed before. And that this change in supply alters the nature of demand: free services such as Craigslist, Skype, Freeview, Wikipedia and Google have created a generation that doesn’t just resent paying, but expects stuff to be free. This is the generation that, for example, paid nothing (or next to nothing) for Radiohead’s new album and got Prince’s last CD free with the Mail on Sunday. This is the generation that doesn’t walk into HMV like losers and shell out £15 for a new album, but downloads it for free from one of the many (often legally dubious) filesharing websites.
Making things to where you name the price, or “donation” as the case may be, is a novel concept which is becoming more common. It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes.
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Sunday, May 04, 2008
The New Dark Knight TrailerWe see a lot more of Heath and Harvey Dent in this one. Looks good.
PLUS: The new Indiana Jones Trailer.
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
Bond, Homeless BondPermalink
REVIEW: Iron Man
I just came back from seeing it. This has to be one of the best translations of a comic book character to the screen. They managed to merge 60s and 70s Iron man stories together to weave a solid origin tale with no fat. And Jon Faverau totally got the character abd gave the film a terrific look. Jeff Bridges makes a great villain as Obadiah Stane and Robert Downey Junior was a revelation as Tony Stark.
This is easily in the top three superhero movies of all time. And the Stan Lee cameo is hilarious this time.
I won’t say more. Go see it.
UPDATE: It’s made $201 million world wide this weekend. Holy crap.
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The Hulk Full Trailer
It look better than the first one. I hope so.
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